


That Whole John Connor Thing

by waldorph



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, M/M, Season/Series 04-05 Hiatus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-04
Updated: 2009-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-07 03:31:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waldorph/pseuds/waldorph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It went bad. And then worse. And then epically bad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Whole John Connor Thing

It went bad. And then worse. And then epically bad.

And then it got a bit better, because people started finding them, and there was a base of operations, and maybe things had gotten so bad that they just _couldn't_ get worse.

There are a few things. Things like how no one can ever hear that Dean was the one who broke the first Seal. Or that Sam broke the last. It's nobody's business, and would severely undercut any confidence anyone has in them. Bad enough Bobby goes around calling them "idjits" every day, but it seems Bobby's been calling every hunter he's ever met worse, so they actually get a boost for _only_ being "idjits".

And even after months have passed, Sam can't let Dean out of his sight. Can't. Part of it is being scared to hell that the angels will swoop in and take him away, or push him into Hell; part of it is that Sam is terrified that if Dean's not there, Sam will do something catastrophically bad. Like, oh, raise Lucifer again.

And Dean is- good at this. This whole lead-the-world thing. This whole John Connor thing (except instead of robots, it's demons).

Sam thinks they've all lasted 8 months into the apocalypse because of Dean. Because Dean doesn't accept defeat, swears and stabs his way through the hordes, and then comes back and wants to know why no one has figured out how to cook pie or raided one of the ramshackle convenience stores for booze. Dean is a weird mix of intensity and normality: Dean is really good at pretending to be okay with everything, even to himself.

Eventually it becomes true, as long as Sam doesn't fuck with the equilibrium. And he won't. Jesus, he won't.

Thing is, it's the Dean Sam remembers from- oh, when he was 8 or so, and Dean was going on hunts with Dad and Sam hadn't quite understood it all, but he'd understood enough. He'd known that Dean would be able to save the world- that he was like Batman or Superman, just with an attitude the size of an ocean.

"Dude," Dean grunts, falling into the bed across from Sam's. They could have their own rooms in the hotel they've taken over as ground zero, but Sam needs to be able to see Dean, to wake up and see him breathing, and Sam thinks Dean might need some sort of reassurance, too. So Sam doesn't ask where Dean gets the stubble-burn on his neck and chin some days, because Dean always comes to their room, in the early hours of the morning. And while Sam's libido has been effectively killed by the apocalypse, this is Dean in his element, and Dean is his element is a horny sonovabitch. As long as Sam doesn't have to _see_ it, he's okay.

"Rough?"

"Bobby found better wards."

"For the angels?" Sam asks. That's the worst- that now the angels are coming after them.

Sam doesn't know the details; knows that Anna is downstairs, that they had to nurse her back to health when they found her in the wreckage of Chuck's house. She hauled Dean away as soon as she could stand, and the two of them had come back with Castiel and Chuck. So now they have two sort-of/out-of-favor angels and a prophet on their side. Chuck keeps watching Dean like he's some sort of miracle- Sam's gathered Dean's the one who took the prophecy and destroyed it, started them writing their own, and yeah, that's his brother. Castiel just watches him. Thing is, Dean watches back, and for a while Sam didn't want to know, but- well.

Dean knows the angel details; Anna and Castiel keep looking at Sam like he's some sort of monster, and Dean's been keeping the three of them apart for months. Sam knows there are things- details- Dean's not telling him. He's okay with it; they've both still got their secrets- just not the big ones.

But some days Sam doesn't see Dean, drawn as he is into the old guard of hunters- to Ellen and Bobby and Missouri and Castiel and Anna. Sam'd asked him if he felt like a baby, and Dean had laughed without humor and said, "Sammy, I'm seventy-two."

Sam hadn't brought that one up again.

Sam has beers with the other hunters. He's always been best when he's with people who need gathering, who need reassurance, and Sam's sort of a one-man organizing and managing party ("Dude, you're fuckin' middle-management," Dean had laughed one night, and Sam had thrown a pillow at him). There's a lot of, "Yeah, Dean really did take out his first black dog when he was 9", and "Yep. Rose outta hell." Sam's not sure when he began to build the myth of his brother.

Maybe when he let Lucifer free and realized the myth wasn't actually false. ("And he shall be Dean Winchester," Chuck had said wryly, "and he shall be the savior of mankind, and lo, his works will be great." At the time Dean had been staring at the wreckage of an oven, nearly with tears in his eyes. Castiel had snorted and dragged him away, informing the room in general that Dean wasn't allowed to cook again.)

"Fuckin' angels," Dean agrees. "Cas says it's gotta be blood, and let's face it, Sammy. We ain't exactly got a lot to spare."

"I can have Rodriguez and Bianchi raid the hospital, see if there's any left; Lenore can go with them, help them track down any blood. I think Nadal was a nurse- could talk to him about organizing blood drives," Sam offers. They sleep in their clothes these days. Stocked up on iron supplements, and they're takin'- probably more than's safe, but it's iron, and they're all doing all they can to stay _alive_.

"Motto'd have to be "do it or we let one of Lenore's take it the hard way"," Dean observes tiredly. That's another thing that's saving them; Dean let in a few vampires; they'd had Lenore, who they'd recognized from the "vegetarian" vampire they'd met with Gordon (sonovabitch). There were a few other kids like Sam; the Chosen Children, as Dean called them. They were here. Castiel and Anna had put the fear of God into them, so to speak.

"You sleepin' at all?" Sam asks.

"'m I lookin' tired?" Dean retorts.

"You look five minutes away from one of Ellen's cocktails that drop a man at 50 paces," Sam retorts. "You don't need that hangover."

Dean stretches out, back cracking as he does. He looks older. So much older. He doesn't quite look 72, but he looks- he looks...like Dad, with deep lines by his eyes and mouth. Silver in his stubble.

Sam shoves at him and lays next to him; it's a tight fit, two grown-ass men in a twin bed. Dean grumbles and shifts until they can lay in relative comfort.

"Thanks," Sam says quietly.

Dean blinks at the ceiling in consternation, because this is the old Dean- or the new Dean, Dean 3.0, and he's all man again. "What?"

"For coming and trying to stop me, for... doing this. For being stronger than-"

"Aw, c'mon, Sam," Dean grunts, and Sam grins slightly at the discomfort in his voice.

"Fine, whatever. Just- I wouldn't make it without you."

Dean snorts, and it's the snort of ages; the snort that says, "No fucking shit, man".

"And neither would they."

Dean sighs. "Go to sleep, Sammy. Tomorrow, we figure out how to turn all the guns into Colts and I'll finish makin' the last batch of the knives."

"And the day after that?"

"Save the world. Then pie," Dean decides, like it's that easy. Like it'll always be that easy. Like Sam can't hear how exhausted he is. Like Sam can't hear the "how the fuck should I know?" and the tremble of being pent up and needing something- some release that Sam just can't give Dean.

Sam smiles, and nods, and as soon as Dean is asleep he hunts down the angels.

It's Anna who approaches him; Anna seems to have more neutrality. Sometimes Sam feels like Castiel replaced God with Dean. It's enough to freak him right the fuck out if he thinks about it too long.

"Sam," she says. Her eyes are huge in her sharp face, and she seems to always see the demon in him and find him wanting.

"Talk to me about the knife," he says.

"Dean knows how to craft it," she replies. "Alastair taught him."

"So he's being reminded of hell all the time," Sam sighs. "That's a great plan."

"It was his idea, Sam," Castiel rasps. Dean never seems to notice, but Sam remembers how Jimmy Novak sounded; a lighter voice, normal, not like it was being dragged over glass. Dean had been freaked out by Jimmy. Sam is freaked out by Castiel.

"He's having trouble sleeping," Sam says finally, telling the wall beyond Castiel's shoulder.

There is absolute silence, and Sam wonders if he's going to have to do something twisted like _give his blessing_ or something, but then Castiel shifts and brushes past him, leaving Sam alone with a highly amused Anna.

"He does care deeply for Dean," she says quietly, shifting in a way that invites him to sit beside her. "You don't have to worry."

"If an angel breaks my brother's heart-" and Sam has to stop because their lives are weird, but that's...that's just too weird for him.

Anna laughs quietly, pulls her hair into a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck, and says, "He can't. His devotion is eternal."

"Oh really?" Sam scoffs, sitting next to her and looking down at the symbols she's sketching out without looking down at her pen. Angelic wards, he suspects.

"'And he shall be loved by all mankind, and be also their salvation'," she quotes quietly, "'and also know the love of one of the Host, and be marked, also. He shall redeem the sins of Adam, and to the end of days know the companionship of his brother, Samuel Winchester, and the love of the angel Castiel, who shall not Fall because of that love, but be Risen to the level of God's most Chosen, the Archangels.' Thus it is written in the Book of Chuck," she said, without any irony.

He must look shell-shocked, because she smiles, reaching over and squeezing his hand. "Do not be afraid, Samuel Winchester, for these are tidings of great joy."

"I feel like I'm in Sunday School," Sam mutters, remembering those few months they'd spent in Georgia, forced to go to church with their landlady while Dad was out on hunts.

"I think Sunday School had significantly less gay sex," Anna observes blandly. "No one ever talks about David and Jon."

Sam stares at her. "My life," he informs her, "just reached whole new levels of bizarre. And that's saying something, because I'm in the middle of the apocalypse, with the biggest group of humanity in the northern continent, two angels, and a few vampires and "chosen children". But talking to a kind-of angel about Dean's sex life? Yeah, that's gotta be the weirdest thing that's ever happened."

And it is weird, and it continues to be weird when Chuck can't look at Dean or Castiel for a full month without turning beet red and stumbling about, and when Sam has to sort of... make these elaborate excuses to be away from the room at a given time and try to install the whole sock-on-the-door method he remembers from Stanford (which doesn't take, because Dean's a bastard, even if he is their saviour).

But it's normal, too. And it becomes normal, and- it's comforting. Because Castiel is an Archangel, and won't fall because of Dean, and when Dean does dumbass things like head out because Missouri had a vision of a few kids down in the town hall basement whose demons have abandoned them to return back to hell, Dean just heads out, not telling anyone.

And Sam whirls around and Castiel is gone, and by the time he and Dean return with the kids, scuffed a little and terrified, but alive and not in critical condition (thank God), Dean looks harried enough that Sam only has to give him the "I'm very hurt you didn't take me with you, and if you had died just think of the things that might have happened to me" look before he caves and throws up his hands and shouts,

"Fine! Jesus fucking Christ, I'll take you all with me next time!"

"That's all we ask," Jo drawls wryly, taking the kids down to see Nadal and get the clean bill of health.

Dean flips her the bird and then grins slightly at Sam.

Sam can't help but grin back and think that it's probably fitting that in the midst of an apocalypse, leading their rag-tag group of survivors, this is where they feel most comfortable.

"What'll we do today, Dean?" Sam asks as they head down to check with Missouri and her band of psychics, Castiel and Anna following.

"The same thing we do every night, Pinky—try to take over the world," Dean cackles.

Sam meets Bobby's longsuffering eyes and laughs.

"Save it, maybe," Sam amends, and yeah. Yeah, this was gonna work.

.end

_/Carry on my wayward son  
There'll be peace when you are done  
Lay your weary head to rest  
Don't you cry no more_

**Author's Note:**

>   
> _**::** Liked the fic? Let me know! Concrit, nitpicks &amp;c always welcome!  
> **::** Unbeta'd  
> **::** In response to **vampedvixen**'s prompt at the "Hug It Out: Post-Season 4 Schmoop-Fic Meme \o/", which was "Sam &amp; Dean - leading a rebel camp of humans after the demons take over Earth"  
> **::** This is the warm-up for my real "in the throes of the apocalypse fic"- which I've been skirting around since the season began...I guess I don't have an excuse anymore, huh?.  
> **::**The original post is [here](http://thehighwaywoman.livejournal.com/135416.html?thread=3712504#t3712504), if you want it in all it's gen glory. This is, obviously, a bit slashier  
> **::** Lyrics from [Carry On My Wayward Son](http://www.mediafire.com/?2dnozyyjjzj), by Kansas  
> **::** This is a work of fiction, characters belong to their respective owners, I make no money off of this.  
> _   
> 


End file.
